The Dale C. Maley Family Web Site

The Summer 2014 issue of Scroll Sawing magazine has a cute pattern for 2 different gnome yard ornaments.

 


This magazine has a pull-out section with full-scale patterns.  I transferred the patterns to Google Sketchup:

The Google Sketchup shown above is for gnome #1.

Materials

The magazine pattern does not call out a type of wood.  I calls for 1" thick stock. I decided to use standard 6 inch pressure-treated deck boards. The pressure-treated wood should last many years exposed to the outdoors, much longer than standard pine wood. It is about 1-1/4" thick, so I used the boards as-purchased versus planing them down to 1" thickness.

Glue

The magazine article calls for using water-proof glue.  I elected to use my Nexabond super-glue for this project.  Since it is not water-based, it should hold up ok in the outdoors.

 Patterns

I used scrap 1/8 or 1/4" boards to make the re-usable patterns.  I printed out the pattern from Sketchup, then glued it to the pattern boards.  I used the scroll saw to saw  out the patterns.

Scroll Sawing the parts.

I started with a course pin-end blade because the pressure-treated is 1.25 inches thick.  Surprisingly, the blade jammed into the wood shortly after I started the cut. A 2nd blade jammed as well.

I switched to a course plain-end blade, and it sawed the pressure-treated ok.  It was slower than the pin-end blade, but at least it worked.  I'm not sure why the pressure-treated pinched the pin-end blade.

Gluing up Gnome #1

 Painting:

 It took 7 different colors to paint these gnomes.  I used Rustoleum for the paint. They were all pint cans except for the red, which was a quart size.  The red was left over from fire engines.

Gnome #2

 Here are the patterns I made for gnome #2:

 Gnome #2 glued up...........

 And Both Finished Gnomes

Concluding Thoughts

 It did not take very long to cut out the pieces for the gnomes, but it took several days to paint each one.  They should make interesting yard ornaments for my sister, the flower gardener.

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